Jeff Schudel: Mike Holmgren stunted Browns' growth

The longer Mike Holmgren is away from the Browns, the clearer it becomes how he not only failed to build the football side into a winner but stunted its growth during his three years as team president.

Like many people, including former Browns owner Randy Lerner, I was taken by "The Big Slow." That's all Holmgren was while he was here -- a big show with some funny anecdotes about his years coaching the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks.

Holmgren's most important tasks were to find a head coach and a quarterback for his football team. He delivered Pat Shurmur as head coach and Jake Delhomme, Seneca Wallace, Colt McCoy and Brandon Weeden as quarterbacks. He produced a record of 14-34, though he somehow believes the 5-11 record in 2010 when Eric Mangini was still head coach shouldn't count because he showed mercy by letting Mangini coach a second year.

I defended Shurmur until the very end and still believe he could have been a successful coach had Holmgren given him more to work with. Look at the list of coaches fired after last season. All but Norv Turner in San Diego were dragged to the bottom by lousy or inexperienced quarterbacks.

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Weeden might become a success, but he was 5-10 as a starter last year and isn't exactly inspiring confidence throughout team headquarters. That's why the Browns sent a scouting contingent to West Virginia on Thursday to watch Geno Smith's dazzling workout and it is why whispers of the Browns trading for Patriots quarterback Ryan Mallet continue.

Had Weeden had anybody competent in front of him, he would not have been forced to start as a rookie, albeit a 28-year-old rookie in the season opener. But when the other choices were Wallace and McCoy, Weeden had to be the starter by process of elimination.

In one of several farewell addresses with the media, in fact during the final one of three, Holmgren spoke with satisfaction about how he improved the business side of the Browns.

"The first thing I did was hire really good business people," Holmgren said on Nov. 26 before leaving town for good. "Bryan Wiedmeirer was in charge of those things as senior VP. I was very involved in budgets for the first time in my life. We've got the house a little bit in order and I think that helped a little in the big business deal (Lerner selling the Browns to Jimmy Haslam III) that took place."

Great, but what about the football side? The new regime is making it very obvious it wasn't overly impressed. It will become even more obvious during and after the draft when CEO Joe Banner and General Manager Mike Lombardi load up on draft choices and their own undrafted free agents.

Tom Heckert's drafts were better than any that preceded him from 1999 to 2009, but he has his fingerprints on the McCoy and Weeden picks, too, and there were other head-scratching picks, such as taking injury-prone safety T.J. Ward and brittle running back Montario Hardesty in the second round in 2010.

For all the work Heckert put into improving the defense, the Browns were 19th against the run and 25th against the pass last season. In fairness, Taylor did miss half the season with a pectoral injury.

Richardson is a gamer. He played with broken ribs and still rushed for 950 yards and 11 touchdowns last season. But he has to produce more to be worthy of the third pick in the draft. Alabama running backs could be like USC quarterbacks -- a product of the all-star talent surrounding them.

Heckert will be best remembered for the blockbuster trade he made with the Falcons on the first day of the draft in 2011. The Falcons drafted wide receiver Julio Jones with the pick that belonged to the Browns. The Browns ended up with Taylor (after another trade), wide receiver Greg Little and fullback Owen Marecic in 2011 plus Weeden in 2012. The fourth-round pick the Browns sent to the Vikings as partial payment to move up one spot so they could draft Richardson also came from the 2011 mega-deal.

Julio Jones in Atlanta would not be Julio Jones in Cleveland if McCoy and not Matt Ryan was his quarterback, but that trade tips decidedly in Atlanta's favor if Weeden doesn't establish himself as the Browns undisputed starter.

Last month, stories surfaced revealing the Raiders are talking to Holmgren about a leadership role in football operations. What could they be thinking? Don't they know what happened here when he was in charge of the Browns?

Holmgren is not the quarterback guru he was painted to be by the media, including me. Browns followers learned that the hard way. Brett Favre made Holmgren a multi-millionaire at Lerner's expense.